"Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) delay in holding a foreign aid vote is prompting furious Democrats to redouble their pressure on Republicans to do an end-run around him – and it might work,” Axios reports.
“Moderate and hawkish Republicans are growing more restless and desperate by the hour with urgent aid to Ukraine poised to fall by the wayside until May if it isn’t passed this week.”
The blurb discusses the use of the discharge petition mechanism. The problem with that is that it is time consuming and, while it would force a vote, it likely would take several weeks before it ends up on the House floor under the arcane discharge petition rules.
The ideal vehicle would be for enough Republicans to vote with Democrats (or simply absent themselves) on a “previous question” vote around one of the foreign aid proposals.
Under House rules, the defeat of a “previous question” motion would give immediately the minority party control of the House for one hour to bring up any germane legislation and force a vote. Jeffries could immediately call up the Senate bill, and the so called “moderate” and hawkish Republicans could join with Democrats to pass it unamended and send it to Biden’s desk for a signature.
It would be the quickest and most efficient way to make this happen (short of Johnson himself bringing up the Senate bill for a vote).
It would be the quickest and most efficient way to make this happen (short of Johnson himself bringing up the Senate bill for a vote).
This may be true but, unless you have a whole mess of Republicans who have no plans to continue a career in GOP politics, it would never work. Any Republican who helped give the Democrats an assist like this would at best never be elected again. At worst they could end up assaulted or killed by MAGA zealots.
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